The present invention relates to a method of locating articles on a support plane on the basis of data which reproduce the location of points on the articles, to a method of detecting articles on a support plane and to an apparatus for the carrying out of the method.
In many cases, it is necessary, on the automatic transport of articles, to be able to distinguish articles of a certain type of shape automatically from one another. This is in particular important if two or more individual articles are touching and there is a risk that this article group is evaluated as a single article.
It is thus necessary, for example on the automatic transport of packages, to recognize packages disposed on a conveyor belt automatically and to separate them from one another reliably on recognition.
It can furthermore be sensible to be able to determine their dimensions or their volumes automatically.
Since in many applications only articles of a certain type of shape occur, it is often sufficient only to be able to distinguish articles of a certain type of shape, i.e. to ensure recognition only within the respective type of shape.
Types of shape are of particular importance here in which the article has a base surface of a predetermined type of surface shape, a top surface substantially parallel to the base surface and one or more side surfaces extending substantially perpendicular to the base surface. Depending on the kind of the type of surface shape, these include, for example, articles of right parallelepiped shape with a rectangular base surface and cylindrical articles with a circular base surface.